


Smoke and mirrors

by nccis



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: First Time, M/M, Moscow, Post-Canon, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-22
Updated: 2012-07-22
Packaged: 2017-11-10 11:36:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/465829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nccis/pseuds/nccis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It may have been the genius of Arthur’s impro-kick, it may have been the delayed effect of him closing his eyes and sharing his secret as if he trusted Eames (which Eames full well knew was not the case). It may have been his nonchalant dismissal of the whole conversation, no, the whole job, even though the goddamned thing revolutionised the whole bloody dreamshare, or that infuriating way of turning him down, Eames did not know, but what he did know was that somehow it was a right move to grab Arthur’s wrist where it was twisting the lock open and smash his body against Arthur’s so that further escape was no longer possible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smoke and mirrors

**Author's Note:**

> This was a little challenge from [sonnss](http://sonnss.tumblr.com), a talented artist I am lucky enough to collaborate with. We decided that he would draw me a picture and I'd write out of it. No other rules, it could be anything. Any fandom, any character, it wouldn’t even have to be a fic, anything at all. So I got the sketch:
> 
>  
> 
> And here’s my interpretation and, of course, the finalized image :) sonnss also to thank for beta reading.

Eames was never one to play down his success, and goddammit he had been the one watching Robert bloody Fischer opening the safe, he had been the one watching with his very own eyes an _inception_ to take off. Inception _._ One day, when Eames would be old and not in mortal peril every second day, he would tell this story to a mate in a dark corner of a pub. “You never know what I once made happen. Something that nobody in the world would believe possible. Well, except a wanker called Cobb but he was a criminal anyway.”

Not that Eames wasn’t a criminal, but that was hardly the point. _Nothing_ was hardly the point when he was standing in the middle of LAX, busy trying to pretend he didn’t know Yusuf, Ariadne, Cobb and Arthur who were idling around the luggage carousel. He wanted to dance around like an idiot, scream _we made it_ and point a gun at Arthur until the man explained how he managed a kick in zero gravity.

All Eames could remember was that split second when he opened his eyes, felt the headphones on his ears and stared at a metallic ceiling. After that, he was already Browning saving the Fischer kid from drowning. Out of all the questions, including _don’t you want to know what Fischer found from the safe? Who the hell did Saito call to get Cobb out of shit of that depth and can I have his contact number too? Guys what are you doing next because I want to get drunk and gamble all of my share and some of Yusuf’s, who’s in? So Cobb, did you and Saito fall in love in limbo?_ the most pressing question, bizarrely, remained the one about Arthur’s kick.

The van Yusuf had been driving had been in freefall. It meant that Arthur being the dreamer of the next level, had to cope without gravity. Eames, the dreamer next level down, was to thank for the gravity for all the consecutive levels: his brain re-adjusted gravity so that the problem did not follow further down. But Arthur, asleep in the falling van, had to deal not only with Fischer’s armed projections but also making up a kick under circumstances where it should not have been possible.

Eames was dying to know how.

Cobb walked past him, not even sparing a glance. Fair enough; it had been the climax of his sorry life, he had spent another eternity trapped in that nightmare and survived, he had his kids to attend to — Eames was not expecting him to do something as mundane as to come to the bar and get drunk to celebrate their success.

Yusuf, again, was far less interesting than the stuff he made (and Eames occasionally stole), like a crossover between a Bollywood actor and Bruce Banner. Ariadne pissed him off with the wet glances she kept shooting Cobb’s and Arthur’s way. Granted, she was talented, but she knew nothing of the business and would have a shit stroke over things Eames considered only a tad fouler than a Bulgarian breakfast.

But Arthur. Good looking as he may have been, Eames gave him that, he was the type of person Eames would never get along with. He knew Arthur felt the same. Only their respect for each other’s work had kept them from plotting murder. Arthur was the best point man in business and Eames’ forgery skills had no replacement. So they let each other exist and only channelled their mutual dislike through teasing and flirting (Eames) and being even more humourless, anal and detail-obsessed than usual (Arthur). It worked out nicely. This particular inception job was so intense, the stakes so high, that they even forgot to exchange mutual insults for the time they spent under.

In hindsight, that may have been playing a part in Eames’ reasoning that since Cobb was preoccupied, Yusuf boring and Ariadne a kid, there was really no reason not to follow Arthur into the airport toilets since the man was apparently stupid or full-bladdered enough to venture there in the first place.

Eames shot his opening line as soon as he saw Arthur standing in one of the cubicles. “I am most glad at that least you managed to hold your champagne until now. Zero gravity _and_ rain, not sure which way the piss would have flooded.”

Arthur frowned at him through the mirror and then glanced around. Only one other person was in the room, and that was a fat man just about to wander out.

Once he had disappeared, Arthur zipped up and turned around. “You know the rules.”

“5221 Hollywood Boulevard, darling, looking forward to the show off.” It was a nice bar Eames had once visited. Live rock, pretty interior, good-looking chicks and enough noise to prevent anyone from overhearing them.

However, something in the tension in Arthur’s back told Eames that he would not show up.

“When I said show off, I did not mean you’d need to come in leather pants, although do not let me discourage you if you do feel the need,” he added and stared at Arthur’s finger pressing the soap dispenser.

“Fuck off, Eames.”

Footsteps from the corridor forced Eames to leave Arthur for the time being. “Sorry, Sir, but there has been an incident,” he told the Mexican man before he had a chance to enter the bathroom. “Someone just vomited all over the floor, and I am here to make sure nobody gets in. It’s the norovirus, if you catch it they’ll have to isolate you in the hospital. There’s another, clean toilet right on the other side of the lobby.”

Once the man had gone, Arthur was already on his way trying to walk past Eames. Eames grabbed his bicep. “Zero gravity, darling. I want to know how you did it.”

The man froze and, out of all the bizarreties, reached up to adjust his collar. Eames dragged him back into the bathroom, all the way to one of the cubicles, trying to ignore how much it felt like a scene out of a porn movie. Luckily, Arthur’s mathematically arranged mind must have had no space for such obscenities, so Eames was alone with his thought.

Arthur leaned against the locked door and exhaled. Apparently, the toilet was safe enough for him to stop the pretence of not knowing Eames.

Either that or he really _did_ want to show off.

Eames, for his part, was still stuck in the sudden porn association and the way Arthur’s Adam’s apple moved when he swallowed, the way his lips parted when he exhaled. Eames made a prompt mental note to never watch porn again and fill his diary with _female_ dates as soon as he had found out the answer to what was puzzling him.

“No gravity, so there’s no drop, right?” Arthur whispered and closed his eyes.

“Right,” Eames said, fully aware he was standing too close.

“They kept breaking in, trying to kill us.”

“I told you they would.”

“I had to chase them out and I was running out of time.”

“I bet.”

A pause. “You know this feeling when you don’t have a clue how you’re going to make something happen but you just need to?”

“Go on.” With his eyes closed and voice low like that, Eames found himself thinking of Arthur the way he never had. The way he should never have, for that matter. Arthur’s efficiency and competency on point aside, there was nothing Eames wanted from him. _Nothing._

“All I had was my gun and the explosives. At first I just thought I’d cover all of you up somehow and then set the explosives off to shoot us all over the place and hope that at least some of us would stay alive and go the level up rather than into limbo. But thinking of this gave me another idea: the elevator.”

“That’s why the metallic ceiling.”

Arthur opened his eyes. They had less than a foot between them, enough for Eames to catch the faintest of dimples appear and disappear. “You had the time to see it?”

“Yes.”

“I set the explosives on the outside of the elevator. Thought the cage must have been built strong enough not to collapse on us immediately, and that the pressure would set it into motion fast enough for you to feel it as a kick.”

“Oh I felt it.” Eames went for professional appreciation but it came out sounding like a naughty confession.

Arthur shifted his balance from one foot to another. “Happy now?”

A silence of staring, broken by Eames:

“So, 5221 Hollywood Boulevard.”

 “I already told you what you wanted to know. What more do you want?”

_To have fun. To vent out about what a prick Cobb is. To pull that goddamned carrot out of your arse. To have you listen to the story about Fischer, the safe and his stupid dad. To toast to being the fucking best of the best until you’ll be so off your face drunk that you’ll start a fight and we’ll get thrown out of the bar._

“I want to unwind,” he settled eventually. “This was the shittiest job in the world of shitty jobs in the shittiest profession of mankind, and I want to have a drink with someone who was there, too. It won’t be Cobb, I’d rather be shot than go out with Yusuf or Ariadne and something tells me Saito is equally unavailable so, Arthur dearest, how’s it going to be?”

Arthur pushed himself off the wall and looked back with his usual blank all-business face. “Not interested. Goodbye, Mr Eames.”

It may have been the genius of Arthur’s impro-kick, it may have been the delayed effect of him closing his eyes and sharing his secret as if he _trusted_ Eames (which Eames full well knew was not the case). It may have been his nonchalant dismissal of the whole conversation, no, the whole job, even though the goddamned thing revolutionised the whole bloody dreamshare, or that infuriating way of turning him down, Eames did not know, but what he did know was that somehow it was a right move to grab Arthur’s wrist where it was twisting the lock open and smash his body against Arthur’s so that further escape was no longer possible.

“I said,” Eames hissed, knowing painfully well that now _he_ was improvising, “I want to get drunk, and God knows you’re going to die of constipation one day if you don’t stop living like you were a machine.”

Arthur snorted and wrapped his fingers around Eames’ neck. It should have been frightening (Arthur was fatal after all) but it was _arousing_ and Eames felt himself get hard, and his body was pressed against Arthur, _fuck —_

“I don’t need anything from you,” Arthur said. His face just as blank as earlier, so Eames had no time to anticipate the quick spinaround that ended up Arthur holding Eames in an elbow choke. Eames fought back but only half-heartedly; his last thought was that Arthur had said no anyway so it did not really matter whether he was put unconscious or not.

He woke up from the toilet floor, according to his watch just one and half minutes later, got up and got out.

His favourite bar in Los Angeles felt no longer inviting. After high-fiving the humiliation queue of turn-down, hard-on and knock-out, all courtesy of dear Arthur, he felt like twenty years had been removed from his emotional development and added to his physical deterioration. That kind of frame of mind coupled with the experience of having witnessed a successful inception was only possible to be resolved in one place:

Moscow.

xx

Although Eames was very fond of Russians, minor historical details aside, he had never thought Moscow was inhibited by the best of breed. Too many rich people that had gotten too much for nothing, too many junkies looking after whatever they could get and it was a lot unless you knew the ways, and the traffic was a mess at best. Yet, it was Eames’ favourite place in the whole world.

Why? Because he had once won a very nice bet. It had been after a job in Siberia (where the people were absolutely lovely), he’d been so worn and in need for a decent hotel with a massive bed that he had booked the first flight to the nearest big city he could think of, and that had been Moscow. It had been his first visit there, and he had made friends with this nice but thick as a furry hat son of a politician called Vlad. As it happened (or shit in Vlad’s case), in just a few days Eames had won all his money and most of his possessions. As a grandiose gesture, performed under severe influence of vodka, Eames had promised him back everything except for that central Moscow penthouse flat that Vlad hated anyway because he used to live there with his ex-girlfriend before they broke up. It had all worked out nicely (Eames had stolen a few thousand grand off Vlad’s account but he would never have been able to find out who it was so no matter).

As a result, Eames had acquired himself a hideaway.

It was not the only flat he owned, but the one he preferred. Firstly because besides Vlad, with whom he was no longer in touch unless he needed protection, he knew nobody in Moscow. Secondly he indeed did have Vlad in case he needed protection. Thirdly because the flat had dark wooden floors, white walls, massive bath, expensive Nordic design all over the place and a massive balcony — big enough to have a tennis match on it.

Eames, however, preferred looking out of his bedroom window because unlike the balcony, it was facing into the city rather than out of it. He could open it completely and just stand by it and look at the roofs, stare at the onion-shaped churchtops and feel so out of place, so detached and so _free._

xx

As Eames turned the key in the lock, his left hand hovered over his gun. You could never know, after all.

But his flat was precisely as he left it. Spotless, dustless (a cleaning lady came once a week), shiny, modern, light and airy. He threw his trench coat on the bed, set down his luggage, took a bottle of beer from the fridge and opened his favourite window. The early afternoon was sunny, rooftops glistening against the freshness of the sky.

There was one problem, however. Eames itched for a smoke. He could have blamed Moscow for it. The previous time he had visited his hideaway had been after a job in which the whole team was compromised, Eames beaten up topside while he was still trying to complete his job under, the extractor and the architect had gotten killed and he had travelled to Russia to lick his wounds for a whole month before even thinking of doing something else.

That time around, the cleaning lady had started covering her nose and mouth with a wet scarf every time she came to work, and after finally feeling strong enough to move out, Eames had decided to stop smoking. His life was likely to be too short anyway, there was no reason to make it shorter by smoking. Not to mention more unpleasant: when you inhaled that thirty-something cigarettes a day, it stopped feeling a pleasure and became a compulsion.

Quitting had been surprisingly easy. Change of scenery and obsessive gambling had helped quite a bit. By the time Cobb had turned up in Mombasa, Eames had considered himself an ex-smoker with no kind of cravings to go back to.

That had been true, too. That had been true right until Arthur had walked into the toilet in the Los Angeles airport.

Eames finished the bottle of beer in one gulp and considered throwing it out of the window, just to get to guess what it would hit. Getting drunk had topped his plan of things to do when in Moscow, however he realised now that it would immediately lead into chain-smoking.

Then again, between that and thinking of Arthur’s fingers curling around his neck, well.

Eames put the bottle on the nightstand and went to raid the drawers. If he recalled correctly, there was a packet still left somewhere. And there was, a full, unopened one. Eames went to get another beer. When one indulged in pleasures, it was always advisable to maximise the moment. It was, after all, always bound to be just a moment — with a beginning and an end. The only way to gain leverage was to grow it in intensity.

He took a long sip from the bottle, set it down on the floor, opened the cigarette package and pulled one out. _I’ll stop again tomorrow. Or next month._ Really, he would stop as soon as he managed to put the inception job past him, as soon as he got his mojo back, as soon as he stopped being pissed off at Arthur for turning him down. There really was no reason to get worked up by that. Arthur was Arthur, and only capable of the things he was, and it had been a stupid idea anyway to suggest him anything outside his comfort zone.

He lit the cigarette with the zippo he always carried with him (smoker or not, a man never knew when something needed urgent ignition) and inhaled.

It went right into his head — a sensation he remembered from when he had his first cigarette at the age of sixteen. That pleasant, dizzying rush, headier than for years. Eames pushed his free hand in his pocket and let his gaze wander over the streets below him, pleasure humming around his skull and relaxing his body.  _Yes._ This is why coming to Moscow had been a bloody brilliant idea. A few weeks of solitude, smoking, looking life only out of the window and watching movies in a language Eames did not speak, and he would be a man reborn. Mulling over this thought, Eames took another drag and concentrated on the idle business of trying to guess the brands of cars moving along the main street. The first Lamborghini he spotted was black, the second yellow — he could use Saito’s money to buy one of those, so yellow that it’d hurt people’s eyes.

So concentrated on his thoughts had Eames been that he had missed the silent clicks of efficient lockpicking. Only when the front door opened, he turned around, cigarette forgotten in his hand, and saw—

  
“I thought you quit smoking, Eames.”

—Arthur standing at the doorway of his flat—

“After that godawful Robinson job that nearly got you killed, you came over here and smoked until your lungs nearly gave out, and then you quit, just like that. Pretty impressive really.”

—Holy mother of god tittyfucking _Arthur_ in a dark blue three-piece-suit and black tie at the doorway of his flat—

“But the craving never really goes away, does it? Your body may forget but your mind still remembers. Oh, Eames.”

— _Oh, Eames?_ The short-circuiting brain of Eames was unable to process the tone of voice of _that,_ the cigarette slipped from between his fingers, forgotten—

“After your little faux-pas at the airport, I guessed it would go to that. Smoking calms you down. And you were pretty wound up.” In a few easy steps, Arthur was right in front of him, bent down to pick up Eames’ cigarette and took a drag.

“Wh—“ Eames attempted and gestured at the impossible event of Arthur closing his eyes and exhaling smoke through his nose, and finally his mind coughed up a thought that made sense, _this is not Moscow, this is a dream, shit, when have I been put under?_ Eames dove towards the bed where both his handgun _and_ his totem were, former hidden under his coat and latter in its pocket,

but he heard the click of Arthur taking off the safety and froze.

“Turn back around,” Arthur ordered in a voice he could have used to order a food delivery. “Walk to the middle of the room. Hands behind your neck, and don’t think I won’t shoot you.”

Eames had to physically fight to keep his eyes open in front of a sight of Arthur pointing a gun at him with Eames’ half-finished cigarette hanging loosely from his lip and one eye slightly squinted to prevent the smoke from making it tear up.

“Your forgery is unimpressive,” Eames finally managed to say, “apart from looks and voice, you got everything wrong.”

“Really, now?” The cigarette moved as the man’s lips curled into a half-smile.

“Arthur doesn’t smoke, for starters.”

“Stay where you are,” he just replied, went to fetch Eames’ coat and handed it to him. “Your totem is in your pocket. Check it.”

Eames found his poker chip and his brain entered another state of emergency malfunction. Normal poker chips, made of plastic of sorts, weighed a lot less than the one Eames used as his totem. It had a lead heart. A tacky Vegas paperweight he had once nicked and customized a bit.

It was the real thing. It was real life.

That must have meant that the man in front of him — the man who just casually set the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger and _snapped_ it out of the window —

was the real, breathing, stick-in-the-mud Arthur.

“No matter what happens today, at least I got to witness the worst mind-fuck of your life,” the real Arthur said and sat down on the very same windowpane Eames had just been standing in front of. He was still pointing his gun at Eames, seemingly absent-mindedly, but Eames had no intention to test how trigger-happy he was feeling.

Especially considering that apparently he had gone stark raving bonkers. An Arthur like this could probably do anything. Eames had no reference point. He went through his options in his mind and finally settled with what felt like the least likely question to get him shot.

“How did you know about this flat?”

“Because, Eames, there is nothing I don’t know about you.”

“Come again?”

“Your name is Charles Eames, no second name, born in London on twenty-seventh of October nineteen-seventy-six. You have a younger brother, Phil, who lives in Manchester and spends all his time with computers. Your mother is dead and your father remarried a woman called Helen. You cannot stand her so it fit you just as well to disappear from all of their lives. Still, sometimes you go to the UK and wander the streets of the neighbourhood you used to grow up in — East Dulwich, by the way — just for the nostalgia. You had a dog as a child but it got cancer and had to be put off, and the whole thing hurt you so much that if someone asks you today and it won’t serve you to claim otherwise, you’ll tell them you hate animals. You own a flat in Paris, another in New York City, a cottage in Norway but your favourite hideaway is this Moscow penthouse you once gambled from a guy called Vlad. You collect vintage records and stock them in your NY flat, you use the Paris one for dating and sometimes take the best of your girlfriends on a short vacation to the Norwegian one. Strangely, most of the time you split up with them afterwards. You buy most of your clothes from second hand shops because you like to think yourself as an artist, a bohemian, and you often don’t shave for the same reason. A week or a month passes by and you feel you start looking like a homeless person, which is when you shave your face and dress up in something nicer.“

A snort followed the word _nicer._

 _“_ This messiness is just a façade of course, like nearly everything about you — you shower at least once a day, brush your teeth three times a day, you drink green tea and you have planned yourself a work-out you meticulously carry out every morning. Yet, in the company of others, you complain about gaining weight and order only the greasiest foods on the menu. And the very same extends to your profession. You make it sound like it’s just sheer talent and you never practice, that forgery just comes naturally to you, but you started pick-pocketing when you were twelve and at the age of fifteen you actually started practising that and a variety of other things. Even today, you keep notes of things to work on, you observe people, watch videos online of people you want to learn to copy, you try mannerisms in front of the mirror, even sometimes record them and watch for further feedback.”

“Wh—“

Arthur help up a hand as a sign for Eames to keep his mouth shut.

“Speaking of recording, you love movies and you are against piracy but you don’t have any patience to go shopping for them so you brave the fact that you are shit at computers and find a way to download illegally, only to then feel bad about it. You sometimes fear you have a drinking problem because hardly two days pass by without at least a bottle of wine. Expensive French reds, usually, nothing that costs less than 60 bucks will catch your interest. You like to think yourself as a womanizer and rightfully so: a side-skill of forgery is that of picking up women. You have lost count on how many you have slept with and many would call you every day if they knew your number, but you are reluctant to discuss with anyone about relationships because the longest ones you’ve had lasted for three or four months. You have never been with a man but sometimes you watch gay porn and masturbate to it. In both men and women, you prefer tall, strong-looking blondes.”

At that, he slowed down.

“Yes, you like blondes. You like the way pale hair and pale skin form a complexion that shine. You like casual, relaxed, outspoken and funny people, the kind of folks you can have fun with, who get along with everybody. All your girlfriends that have lasted more than a week have been like that.”

“Arthur,” Eames forced his voice out clear and low, afraid that his mind would explode if he heard a word more. “Enough. So you know everything about me. I got that. I am not going to ask you how, because I am not sure if I want to know the answer, but could I kindly please ask you to explain _why_ you have felt the need to dig up all this information?”

Arthur got up from the windowpane and walked closer. His eyes seemed to have gotten stuck watching Eames’ lips.

“I could say this: You are a great forger, a master of deception, and that requires a considerable ability to identify and reveal similar kind of attempts in other people. I have watched you doing this successfully so many times. So I needed to keep tabs at you, know you inside out, so that I would be alerted if you would suddenly find out something I don’t want you to.”

Eames ventured on the tentative path he thought Arthur was laying in front of him. “You could say that, yes… Something makes me think that recording what I know was not your purpose.”

“Yes and no. Yes, because there was something I needed to hide. From everyone, really, but your talent of getting under people’s skin made you the most dangerous candidate to find it out.”

 _What could it be?_ Eames’ mind was listing government connections, hidden forgery skills, something to blackmail Eames with, shocking family connections to celebrities, crimes against humanity —

“And no, because it wasn’t just to monitor. It was also to find out what you like. What you prefer.”

“Sorry, Arthur, you lost me there. Prefer as in how?”

Arthur frowned at him angrily. “It worked out just fine. I concentrated on work and put up with you only when I absolutely had to. Good. Great. Fine. It was tolerable. Somehow, when Cobb said he’d go and fetch you from Mombasa, I smelled trouble. I even tried to talk him out of it but no, he wanted you in the team.” He looked like he was going to spit Eames in the face. “I was right. That good old meaningless flirting I could take, but you were becoming downright rude, _darling,”_ the last word was drawled which such an imitation of Eames that he highlighted “forgery” in his mental list, “with all your little insults every time I tried to be civil at you. Professional.”

 _It’s about me,_ Eames realised with an inexcusable delay, and a tremor ran up his spine. Arthur leaned back, as if to take a better look at Eames,  and Eames nearly groaned at the way Arthur’s gaze wandered all over his body. _He’s come to kill me. He’s broken into my house to fucking shoot me in the head._

In a desperate act of self-preservation, Eames made himself speak.

“Even if this is about personal revenge, Arthur, I am sure there is a price tag. You know I’ve got it, after Saito. There is no need for murder. You know it’s such a bother. We can sort this out.”

Arthur snapped out of his task of staring at Eames’ chest to nail him with a pair of eyes full of laughter. “Still that far off in the thinking process, Eames? I’d love to know which one it is that I have misunderstood: your level of intelligence or your assessment of my nature.”

And, just like that, he dropped the gun on the floor, like it had never mattered.

“Actually, never mind. Of course it is the latter.” He grabbed Eames by the collar and yanked him close. “Because being good at point means being good at having everything covered and, furthermore, one of the countless things about you that turn me on is your intelligence.”

It was only the demanding pressure of Arthur’s lips on his that clicked everything into place. The airport, the proximity, Eames poking around subjects previously unventured and Arthur reacting badly. The chokehold; the hard-on.

 _Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuckfuckfuck_ Eames’ mind screamed and he desperately tried to put puzzle pieces together, from Arthur knowing positively _everything_ about Eames, to being always so uptight, to lockpicking the door that nobody was supposed to know existed, to—  to—

— to Arthur pressing a rock-hard erection against, well,

against Eames’ matching one.

Eames moaned out of both shock and arousal, and Arthur pulled him closer by wrapping his fingers around Eames’ neck _just like at the airport_ , slipped his tongue inside his mouth. The man kissed like a devil, so greedy and insistent that Eames didn’t really manage to breathe, and when Arthur finally leaned back, what he said was:

“Hate me all you like, but you don’t rub your cock on me in a toilet and get away with it. Tonight you’re _mine.”_

He finished it with a hard, two-handed shove on Eames’ chest. Eames staggered and fell on the bed. Arthur snuck a hand under his back to snatch the handgun and throw it on the floor.

 _He wants me._ Eames’ mind was running its umpteenth attempt to comprehend that his idea of Arthur had been wrong, _so wrong,_ it had all been just an act, and to what means.

“Countless things about me that turn you on—“

“ _Yes,”_ Arthur picked Eames up from the armpits as if he weighted nothing and threw him further back on the bed, so that Eames ended up in a half sitting position against the generous pile of pillows. “Today I’ve had the displeasure to find out that even you being spectacularly _stupid_ turns me the hell on.” Arthur straddled him and wrapped his fingers around Eames’ neck again, both hands this time, and bent down to run his teeth along Eames’ jaw line.

“I don’t— _ah,”_ Eames wanted to form a sentence but it was bloody difficult when Arthur was biting him like that.

“Don’t what?”

Eames lifted his hands to grab Arthur by the sides, slid them down until he found the angle of his hips jutting through the skin, right above the belt and nearly fainted at the groan Arthur gave him for that.

“I don’t—hate you.”

Arthur stilled against Eames’ neck, for so long that Eames started fearing he had said the wrong thing and would end up decapitated.

When he finally answered, his voice was just a whisper.

“Wanting to fuck someone and hating someone are not mutually exclusive, Mr Eames.”

“I didn’t know I wanted to fuck you,” Eames confessed before he could catch himself. “Before Los Angeles anyway.” As if to prove the point, he pulled Arthur’s shirt out of his pants and felt the hot skin of his back. Arthur’s moan vibrated against his throat.

“Which is precisely I did not find about it before Los Angeles, either.” The grip of Arthur’s fingers loosened ever so slightly, and Arthur pressed a kiss — a slow, tender kiss — right above his stranglehold on Eames’ neck. “I always thought you treated me different because you disliked me so much. Had I known— _God—“_ Arthur took a batch of skin between his lips and sucked tenderly.

“How long have you—“

“Forever.” Arthur lifted his head and tightened the stranglehold as if to emphasize the meaning of that one, single word. Eames needed to suppress another tremor when he saw the black, glazed look of his eyes. “Fucking forever, you fucking intolerable piece of shit.”

He gave Eames no chance to even begin to digest what that reply may have meant, _what exactly_ Arthur was meant by _forever_ , by releasing one hand to start unbuttoning Eames’ shirt and smashing his head against the headboard with the other. The noise he made when he finally got Eames’ shirt open and attacked the skin there was so loaded with feeling that Eames tried to arch his hips upwards in a mindless attempt to get _more._

 _I want him,_ he thought, with a dizzying realisation that he may never have wanted anything as much.

“I have thought of touching you here and hated you for knowing it can never happen,” Arthur whispered and ran a heavy palm across Eames’ stomach, to his chest, and Eames had to close his eyes when he felt Arthur’s fingers mapping his muscles, his nipples, his collar bone. “Keep your eyes open,” Arthur commanded immediately and leaned in to kiss.

“I have thought of kissing you,” he said against their joined lips, “I have thought of kissing you while doing _this,”_ his hand was lower down all of a sudden, feeling Eames through the fabric of his pants, and Eames groaned with a tone he did not know he possessed.

“Naked,” he managed, “You’re beautiful and I want you naked.”

Arthur’s response was an open-mouthed exhalation, _was that surprise?_ and within a blink he had unbuttoned and removed his shirt.

 _He really is beautiful, and a million times more beautiful like this._ All contrasts of black hair and flawless skin. Somehow, despite the years of training and the impressive stamina he had developed, Arthur had managed to retain something very boyish about him. Perhaps it was his complete lack of chest hair or the way his hip bones jutted from his skin _and god that Eames wanted to taste just there,_ perhaps it was the barely-there strip of black hair leading across his stomach down below. Perhaps it was the shape of his shoulders, the strained tendons on his neck when he was breathing hard, perhaps it was the way his black hair was falling on his face now that there was nothing to hold it in place — no gel, no self-preservation.

Arthur was, quite possibly for the first time in his life, _out of control._ The thought of that made Eames want to fuck him blind. _Immediately._

“Jesus bloody buggering fuck,” he managed and pulled Arthur close, roughly, skin on skin, and reached for another kiss. He pushed his tongue inside Arthur’s mouth like never before and ran a hand down his back, inside his pants, and the fucking belt was on the way so he unbuckled it, unfastened the trousers and finally was able to touch Arthur lower.

The only distinguishable word out of Arthur’s moans was _Eames,_ and his hold on Eames’ neck slipped away.

“Right here, darling,” Eames said and rolled them over so that he could put his whole weight on Arthur, but not before discarding his shirt and all the little clothing Arthur still had left.

“ _Eames,”_ demanding, hips arching upwards.

Eames leaned in for a full mouthed kiss and let his hand wander down. He felt the way Arthur tensed, waiting for the touch, and once he was finally _there,_ arched his head back and let out something akin to a sob.

“I can’t reach the drawer. Do it, now. I need you inside me.” Arthur was still trying to reach for a commanding tone but his voice was broken, and it made Eames want him even more.

“Easy, darling,” Eames replied and wondered at which point he had taken control. Whenever it had been, it must have been a great moment because he could imagine nothing better than looking at the way Arthur’s face twisted, almost as if he was in pain, the way his breath came out in short, choked pants, the way his eyes were getting _wet_ and _he’s close,_ Eames realised, _he’s about to come already, my fucking God,_ and stilled his hand.

“Right, the drawer,” he said, almost to himself, aware but uninterested in the fact that Arthur knew what was where in his Moscow flat.

Arthur had his legs bent and eyes wide open when Eames was ready. Under the weight of being naked under Arthur’s gaze, he felt heavy, heady, confused until he realised what he felt was actually nervousness. To be good. To be right.

Not to mess things up.

“Still all right?”

“I don’t know if I know you anymore,” Arthur replied and wrapped his legs around Eames to force him into position. “From what I have learned, you always take, not ask.”

“I don’t know if I know you anymore either,” Eames replied, surprised by his ability to form a sentence when Arthur was drawing him in like that.

It was not just Arthur’s body. The want, it was all about the all-consuming want and the very form and shape of it. It was his ability for zero gravity kick, it was his ability for deception,  it was the want to _know_ what it was that Eames had thought he knew but had not known at all.

“No different than what you always thought.” Arthur was watching Eames’ face. “Except for being hell bent on never letting on that I have a small problem with you.”

“It’s not small,” Eames said and made his point by grabbing Arthur.

“Get—ah—“ Arthur grabbed Eames by the biceps, “get on with it or I’ll kill you.”

The neediness of Arthur’s tone startled a laugh out of Eames. He dropped himself down on one elbow and buried his face in Arthur’s neck.

“In Mombasa, I told Cobb,” at that he pushed in and Arthur _screamed_ so that the Kremlin must have gone on alert, “that you have no imagination.”

“You— “ Arthur pressed back against him on every slow push, “—have—no—idea.”

“Apparently not,” Eames admitted, and his resolve was gone. His ability to have a conversation with Arthur’s nails digging into his arms, with Arthur’s lips hovering all over his face, with Arthur so hot around him, against his skin, arching onto him — it was not what any man could have been able to bear, let alone Eames, as he now knew why he had always taken such pleasure in tormenting Arthur.

Why what took the shape of insults and arrogance to others, turned into flirtation with Arthur.

Why his desire to show off his skills had got out of hand with every Cobb job.

Why he had always paid attention to the way Arthur’s hair was gelled back and his suits intact, why he wanted to pour a bucket of paint on him just to watch the perfection come down.

Why he had tried to knock Arthur’s chair back, hoping he’d hit his head and have a concussion.

Why he had always kept his gaze on the blondes.

On the females.

On the funny.

On the empty.

The shallow.

Not Arthur.

Neither of them was in control any longer; Eames was pounding Arthur into the bed as if he was trying to kill them both. Which he quite possibly was. He could feel noises vibrating against his skin but had no idea which one was making them, he could feel wetness somewhere in the proximity of his mouth, he could taste Arthur on his tongue, feel Arthur’s fingers on his chest, arms, shoulders, eventually curling around the neck again to _choke_ and he was losing air, he was losing his sanity and he was losing himself in the impossible thought of _coming inside Arthur —_ and the very the last thing he could remember was an image of Arthur, wide-eyed, ecstatic and furious and trying to strangle him to death, but he had no time to decide if it was imagination, dream or reality before he passed out.

  


xx

Eames woke up at the feeling of knuckles brushing gently against his chin. He opened his eyes and saw it was Arthur pulling up the blankets. Eames was naked underneath.

Out of instinct, he reached for the gun in his nightstand. It was there, and at the very same moment Eames remembered that the previous night it had lain forgotten on the floor.

With that memory, everything else flooded in. Eames put the gun back down and looked at Arthur, who was standing by the bed. His hair was flawless as usual, his dark blue suit perfectly ironed ( _how the hell?),_ his tie was different from the previous night (dark blue now) and he could not have looked more like the usual, logical, merciless, super-efficient, unimaginative sidekick of Dominic Cobb.

“Cobb’s out now so I’ll have full control over who’s in my team and who’s not,” Arthur said, as if he had been reading Eames’ mind.

“What?” Eames rose up to sitting (and failed to miss the way Arthur’s glance visited his chest before coming back to challenge his face). “You want to talk about work now?”

“Nothing to talk beyond what I just said.” Arthur looked down. “We will not need to meet again. Goodbye, Mr Eames.”

“ _What?”_ Eames hated repetition and now he was doing it himself but this was emergency. He got up and wrapped a restrictive arm around Arthur’s chest just when the man had turned around to go, pressed his naked body against Arthur’s suit.

Marvelled at the way Arthur stilled at the touch.

After a forever of standing in silence, he tucked his chin into Eames’ elbow and closed his eyes. Eames watched him silently, realising Arthur was giving him time. Giving him time to say what he wanted. Giving him time to make the call.

Arthur had been ready to sign it off as a night of _whoa we made it alive how the hell did you manage that kick man you look hot I need Moscow and a fag and yes maybe I need you too let me nail you to the mattress and faint on your body, bye._

Do, did, done.

It was not like that.

Inception required imagination, as Eames had so famously declared, and to live and tell the tale Arthur had been forced to use some of his. This single, out-of-character act of creativity had drawn Eames in like a magnet, and what it had set off had been a wave far too powerful for them to control.

That was all right. Eames was not a man of control and, in the light of the most recent evidence, neither was Arthur at the end of the day. Besides, he had not even yet had the chance to kiss the skin on Arthur’s hips, and that simply wouldn’t do.

So he tightened his hold on Arthur’s chest and pressed his lips against Arthur’s ear, relishing the way Arthur shivered under the touch.

“Go all professional and buttoned up on me as much as you want but you can’t tell me you love me and get away with it.”

Arthur looked like a child with the gaze he gave Eames at that. Caught up in the act. “I never said I loved you.”

“Not in so many words.”

Eames may have lost that round, he may have overestimated his skills, but deep down he still _was_ the best forger in the world, and it meant he could scratch the surface and find what he wanted. So he laughed a bit, breathily, and leaned in a bit more so that he could kiss the new dimple on Arthur’s cheek. “Now, darling dearest, you are _mine.”_


End file.
